Pat Farmer (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on a subject which is very dear to my heart and one that has been an issue for me ever since I came into this political career. It is the issue of young people living in nursing homes. I have a particular nursing home in my electorate called Carrington, and I have been out there on several occasions and visited these young people who have been through the mill. They are living in this nursing home with a lot of very elderly people. They are being cared for. It is true that they are living their life in a wheelchair or in a nursing home bed, but they are still young on the inside. They are people who have fallen off horses and cracked their skull on the ground; they are people who have been in car accidents, motorbike accidents and even had swimming accidents. As a consequence of all of that, they find themselves in wheelchairs and in nursing homes because in New South Wales there are no other facilities available to them.

There is an organisation called Youngcare which is doing phenomenal work up in Queensland. It was set up for this very purpose. These young people need support and care but they also need stimulation from other young people and young surroundings. For that very reason I took a number of these people out to Oran Park Raceway in the bus that was provided to us. They spent the day out with me and they watched the motor car races out there. That was their first outing like that—doing young things, getting involved with things that they still had an interest in—in all the time that they had been there, and in some cases we are talking about four to five years.

I call on the New South Wales government to please address this issue. Since I came into this job, I have had numerous people, including federal ministers, come out and have a look at the situation in New South Wales. Whilst there have been commitments by the federal government to provide funding for beds, that has not been followed up by state government support and consequently those beds have not been provided. I call on this House to address this issue, for people to be more aware of this issue and for us as a nation to work with the state governments to come up with an answer for these young people so that they may have a more fulfilled life. Just because they are in a wheelchair, just because they have had an unfortunate accident, does not mean they should be consigned to a life without stimulation as far as their mind is concerned. They should be able to watch young programs, listen to the music that they like to listen to and be able to experience some things that will give them an improved quality of life.